StarCrossed
by Xenutia
Summary: After the events of 'The Crossing', Hoshi Sato discusses her experiences with one of the other victims . . . Malcolm Reed.


**Star-Crossed**  
**by Xenutia**  


  
  
**Disclaimer:** Insert generic disclaimer info here What? I'm running out of ways to say I don't own it and this is not for profit. But I don't and it's not. Worst luck.  
**Rating:** G  
**Category:** Friendship, possible romance  
**E-Mail:** sorted@witzend.fsbusiness.co.uk  
**Summary:** Exactly where were the possessed crew during 'The Crossing'?  
**Author's Notes:** This is a little coda to The Crossing', hence the lame title. I came up with this in about two seconds and wrote it in a few minutes, so please don't kill me if it sucks like an open airlock. But so many people wanted to know what others apart from Trip had felt about the experience that I thought I'd give it a shot.   
  


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Hoshi Sato sat mutilating a piece of baked alaska in the mess hall, idling scraping the ice-cream from the brittle outer shell. She'd never even liked baked alaska, not as a rule. She'd just wanted something to pull to pieces.  
  
It was too quiet, and her relationship with silence had always been an uneasy one; perhaps it was her advanced grasp on linguistic patterns, but she always knew when a silence was a natural lack of noise and when it was branded into the very fabric of the room like dust, a part of the language, a way of saying things that would not suffer to be spoken aloud. This silence, on the surface, shouldn't have made the little hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention like sentinels - the mess hall was all but empty and only a spattering of late snackers meandered throughout, some murmuring but most afraid to break the hush that lingered in every corner - and it should be expected that there wouldn't be a whole lot of conversation going on. But it wasn't that, and she knew it.   
  
Nearly all of the late nighters were those that had experienced the Crossing. Fifty-eight of the crew either slept or worked their shifts in peace, untroubled, but the twenty five that remained couldn't sleep. Their minds weren't on their work. Like hers. They stayed up late, ate cake and ice cream and gossiped about nothing until sleep overcame them against their will, but they wouldn't go retreat to their beds until they had no other choice.   
  
Sleep was too much like that other place.  
  
Hoshi wriggled her toes in her sweat socks and tucked her left hand into the pocket of her baggy t-shirt, the right still prodding at the dessert like a cat playing with a mouse. Her bunk had never seemed so unwelcoming, and so terribly cold. She had tried to get some rest . . . but as soon as she drew near to that line between waking and sleeping, a very different crossing but one still far too close for comfort, she had bolted awake, and come here. Where there were people, and sound, and light and _life_ . . . where she couldn't be swept off to sleep before she was ready to go.  
  
I think it's dead, said a soft voice at her shoulder. She twisted her head, and found herself staring into a nicely honed stomach covered by a clingy sweat-soaked white t-shirt. He was holding a bowl of cereal in one hand.  
  
She found her voice, albeit belatedly. Sorry, sir. I didn't expect anybody.  
  
Is anyone sitting here?  
  
No. No, go ahead. Truth be told, she was a little afraid to be alone right now. Each of them had been alone, when they were taken . . . a fact she hadn't consciously noted, until now. She had been on the bridge, true; but she hadn't been in plain view of anybody. These things apparently didn't like to be seen if it could be avoided. Trouble sleeping?  
  
A little. As he slumped sideways into the facing chair she noticed that he was wearing his gym clothes, but had kicked off his shoes and socks somewhere along the way. She didn't know why the fact that he was barefoot stood out to her, but it did.   
  
I don't usually eat late. But I didn't want to be alone right now. And sleeping . . . She regarded him thoughtfully across the expanse of polished table between them; gauging him, how much she could trust him, how much she could and should say. She had eaten with him and spoken to him almost every day for some months now, some two years, and had been vaguely aware of his existence even before their launch . . . but the times that she had _really _talked to him? Those times when some secret or special piece of information was exchanged between them, something she had told no one else or that no one else had heard from him? Those she could count on one hand, and still have fingers left.  
  
Something decided her, quite suddenly. He had reached across, plucked a broken shard of meringue from her plate, and popped it into his mouth with a smile. Now that, he said, when he had swallowed, was a meringue even my poor old grandmother couldn't hope to beat.  
  
Hoshi laughed, unaware that she had it in her tonight. Finish it, if you want. I don't even like baked alaska.  
  
Then why have it?  
  
She threw down her fork, and it clattered an angry retort against the plate's edge. I wanted something to . . . well . . . I suppose because I wanted to do to something else what's just been done to me. To lots of us.  
  
He studied the mound of mangled egg white, sugar, and vanilla ice cream for a moment, turning the plate a few degrees to one side and then the other just to be sure he hadn't missed anything. I don't follow.  
  
The . . . the crossing. Didn't you feel like . . . like you'd been scraped out of your body, and . . . and sort of . . . melted?   
  
Malcolm eyed the plate, his cereal forgotten, and then took a bite of the meringue. She noticed that he used her fork instead of his own spoon. You've put me off a bit, to be honest, he muttered. There's nothing more guaranteed to make food unappetising than comparing it to body parts. But he ate it anyway. That man would consume anything that couldn't get away or defend itself.   
  
After he had worked his way through another bite, he put the fork down carefully, laying it down with a care and grace akin to his every other move; his walk, she had often seen, sometimes barely allowed his feet to touch the deck. Such silent feet, and a light step. Hoshi . . . he began, and she stiffened at his use of her name. . . . what did you see? In that other place, I mean. Commander Tucker said something about Hop Along Cassidy. And an old girlfriend of his. But then he always was a bit strange.  
  
She smiled to herself and for an instant she was alone once more, her fingers twisting at the seam of her pocket and her eyes staring through the tabletop into another time, another place. The warmth of that memory almost stole away the unease that had permeated her bones since she had been returned to her body, almost made those bones feel hers again. The sense of being a visitor in her own body had been the hardest part of that hideous awakening and the thing most difficult to cast aside. Like ice cream scraped from a baked alaska - pack it back in, smooth it down and pat it with a spoon, it would never be quite the same. I was happy, she said, distantly. The marbled blacks and greys of the table kaleidoscoped before her, their hidden language melting into another one and stranger as she stared, and thought, and dreamed awake. They took me places where I wanted to be. I remember that. They seemed to know. I mean . . . I saw the kitten I had when I was five . . . and the day I graduated second in my class. She felt a hum of laughter warm her mouth as it came, rich and carrying with it waves of that golden glow that clung to her still. And I was on a beach. A warm beach, maybe Greece or Spain. I can't be certain of that. I was barefoot and just . . . walking through the surf, with my sandals in my hand. I was completely alone and I've never felt more safe in my life. Like somebody was watching over me. You know that feeling?  
  
She snapped from the gentle hypnosis and the phantom wash of waves on a shore, distant and pale like the echo in a seashell, and found herself staring into his very blue eyes. She had expected him to laugh.   
  
He was perfectly serious.  
  
Where are your shoes, Lieutenant? she asked, suddenly.   
  
I left them in my quarters. For some reason I kept thinking I had sand on my feet and spent about an hour trying to wash it off.  
  
Hoshi gulped. She didn't know about his feet but there was sand in her throat, lots of it, choking her as she tried to ask him the question he had asked her. Where did they take you, Lieutenant? They took us somewhere where we'd be most happy, didn't they? So we wouldn't fight it. She was staring helplessly at his feet; already, she knew what he was going to say.  
  
You know where I was, Ensign, he replied, his voice suddenly placid and pale as the waves. There's a lot of sand on a beach.  



End file.
